Nadia Battocletti is too small, – class 2000! –cannot know how it was at the time when Italy dominated the middle distance.
He cannot know about the sprints of Alberto Cova and the strokes all to pull by Francesco Panetta and not even the hat -trick of Stuttgart: Mei, Cova, Antibo. For her Stefano Mei is only a federal president and seeing a movie on YouTube is not the same as running on their shoulders live. Less than can know about Franco Arese and Venanzio Ortis and on shorter distances by Marcello Fiasconaro.
It cannot know by Paolo Rosi who shouted “Cova Cova Cova”, when the accountant of Brianza started his relentless and impetuous sprint in a turn and a half from the end.
He cannot know how beautiful it is now, seeing her run and, with her, to return young, having the feeling of recovering together with her present and her future, also a past that we believed irreparably lost.
SortEmbra impossible and instead she is there, and wins in the footsteps of Gabriella Dorio, not even Paola Pigni. And he does it with a lightness and an elegance that we did not know. As beautiful as the sun. As it runs, not only because it wins.
He does not know, he cannot know that he resumed and re -tanned the blue thread of a very long ball: a long story that began long before her and now all in her feet that have the air of not feeling the weight. As if running was the most natural thing in the world for her.
And who knows if someone told her about something of the other half of her heart and Nawal El Moutawakel, the first women’s Olympic gold medal of the Arab world, Islam, Africa, in Los Angeles 1984 (400 obstacles, however), Moroccan like her mother.
The European road running title with Italian record in Lovanio, thanks to which he dragged the whole team, on April 13, 2025, is only the last of his titles. Follows European golds of 5 and 10 thousand meters, individual European gold and country racing teams, the Olympic silver in Paris. All in ten months. He is 25 years old, his life in front, a radiant smile and a potentially distant goal.
